Of Panic and Promises
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Christine tells Erik her news and he has a meltdown.


**A/N: Written for a Tumblr anon who requested something with Erik having a panic attack. Warnings for panic attacks and pregancy.**

* * *

Her words tighten like a noose around his throat and it's a struggle to draw breath. With child. _With child_. She's pregnant. There is to be a child. How? How could that happen? Why? What-

He gasps, the trembling that started in his fingers spreading up through his arms and he is powerless to stop it when it reaches his spine in an instant. Her face is pale, teeth buried in her lip and all he can think is that there is to be a _baby_. A baby. How can he be a father? How could that happen?

Pain lances through his gut and he gasps, his knees buckling. Her hands are gentle on his arms but her touch is not enough to steady him and she falls to the floor beside him, her words garbled in his ears. _All right, Erik…all right…nothing to worry…fine…_ He cannot grasp them. They slip through his fingers as intangible as mist, his head spinning and he is cold, so cold though he's wrapped in his dress suit and cloak, his heart racing, stomach twisting.

He's destroyed her, broken her. How can she bear his child? It is impossible, unnatural! It is wrong it will kill her break her hurt her destroy her and he cannot stop it and he should never have let it happen and he always knew he was a monster but now he knows it knows it and cannot escape the fact that his very touch has ruined her and there is a baby and it will look like him and how can he inflict that on a child all that he's been through it is cruel it is evil it is wrong and his eyes burn, the tears trickling down his cheeks, his lungs burning for breath, black spots dancing before his eyes.

And there was such hope in her eyes, such happiness, excitement as she told him and he's ruined that too now. She's going to hate him. She'll leave him, now, before there is ever a child and come back in a few months' time with the baby and show him his own monstrous face, and she'll hate him forever for inflicting that, for being so-so _careless_.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, his voice hoarse and strangled. "I'm sorry, Christine, I'm sorry."

She shushes him, her voice as sweet as ever, and kisses his hair, cradling him close. He cannot hear her words, muffled as they are, but surely she is condemning him, surely she knows, too what this means.

He pulls back, unable to bear her touch in the knowledge that she'll never touch him like this again, once she knows how it will happen. Tears are trickling from her own eyes, marring her beautiful face, but still she reaches out and brushes his own away.

"Erik." His name in her voice cuts through the fog of his brain, and the air is cold searing in his lungs but he draws a breath, and another one, very nearly choking on the air. Her arms wrap around him again, and pull him close, her voice shushing his whimpers, as she rocks him, back and forth and back and forth, gently, carefully, as if he can shatter any more. "It will be all right, Erik. I promise."

She cannot promise that. She does not know. There are any multitude of things that can go wrong, and the baby is bound to look like him, carry his mark. "What if-" and his tongue struggles but forms the words, the very ones that must be said. "What if the child looks like me?"

Slowly, she draws back, a slight smile twitching at her lips. "Then I will love it all the more." Her lips brush his forehead, infinitely gentle. "Don't panic, Erik. It would not be so very terrible. I won't be upset." She kisses him, again, and hugs him tighter. It is on the tip of his tongue to say something more, to protest her innocence in the matter, but he finds that he cannot. He is too tired, sleep tugging heavy at his eyelids. Perhaps she is right. Perhaps everything will be all right.

He takes a deep breath, and sighs, his heart aching a little less though his fingers are still trembling. Oh, how lovely it would be to believe her. "It will be all right," he murmurs, as if by saying it he can believe her. "It will be all right."


End file.
